Taking new illicit drugs is like playing ‘a dangerous game of roulette’.

New drugs were detected in the EU last year at the rate of around one a week – the highest number of new substances recorded by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction in a single year. In total, 49 new drugs were noted by the EMCDDA in 2011, up from the 41 noted in 2010 and 24 in 2009. The organisation says that all of the new substances discovered last year were synthetic and that they fall into two main groups – synthetic cannabinoids (which mimic the effects of cannabis) and synthetic cathinones (which mimic cocaine).....